I arrived in British Columbia in the fall of 1978 and was quickly made aware of the politics of the province. There was something close to caricature in the divide between left and right. – the NDP, led by social worker and democratic socialist Dave Barrett, and the Social Credit government, with its focus on public sector restraint, led by Kelowna businessman Bill Bennett.

The election of 1979 was close, but the result was not unexpected. The Social Credit government maintained its majority, and Dave Barrett continued as leader in opposition. But the election of 1983 was different. On the morning of the election I had happily proclaimed to anyone who would listen that this was the last day of Social Credit government in the province.  The 1982 recession and investigations of both insider trading and securities fraud were taking a toll.

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“I don’t believe in much”, my friend Bob said not long ago, “but I do believe in the rule of law”. And so it is with me as well. Forget the remote possibility of various rulers in the sky and elsewhere. I’m more interested in working out the fairness and legitimacy of the rules that speak to reconciling the inevitable tensions that exist amongst individuals, nation states, and the global community.

Not long after flying into Kiev, Ukraine in late November, I began to understand that this was a nation state without any fundamental adherence to the rule of law.  The former Prime Minister and oligarch Yulia Tymoshenko is in jail, imprisoned for seven years over a natural gas contract signed with Russia in 2009.  The United States, Russia, the UK, the European Union and NATO have all condemned the charges and her imprisonment as the “selective prosecution” of political opponents. Human rights organizations have, not surprisingly, been similarly critical.

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In July of 1910, when Dr. Hawley Crippen arrived by ocean liner in Quebec City, he was arrested for the murder of his wife; the emerging technology of the wireless telegraph was responsible for his demise. The good doctor was the first person to be caught in such a manner: he had fled the United Kingdom with his lover, but the wireless telegraph –- the precursor to the telephone — allowed the British to effect his capture.

Much has changed since 1910. We now have technologies of communication that would have seemed unthinkable even 20 years ago. The arrest of Luka Magnotta is a telling illustration of the power of the internet, a framework of communication that was, in practical terms, only in its infancy in the 1990s.

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There were, not surprisingly, hundreds of people at the celebration of life for Mick Strubin. Bowen Island Fire Chief Brian Biddlecombe said of his friend and fellow firefighter, “Mick was born in West Vancouver in 1944 and retired shortly afterwards”. Funny and true — Mick was a lucky man, able to do pretty much what he wanted in his 68 years on the planet, and along the way he picked up hundreds of friends and admirers.

Mick’s son Christoph noted that his father was known for falling trees, firefighting, sailing and rugby. When we first moved to Bowen more than 30 years ago Mick was the one we called when we needed tree work done. Every year for more than a decade he would come over and take out a tree or two, often taking out fewer than we had initially thought was appropriate. It never seemed that we were hiring Mick to work for us. It always seemed more accurate to say that Mick was coming over for a conversation and would take down some trees, if he thought that made sense. And when he’d finally give us a bill, we always thought it was too little.

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Cannabis has been taking centre stage in recent weeks. Former attorneys-general  and Vancouver mayors in British Columbia have called for regulation and taxation of the industry, in an attempt to stop the violence of the illegal trade.  At the same time the Harper government continues to move to passage of legislation that will mandate a six month minimum term of imprisonment for anyone growing six plants or more.

Undeterred, activists and pundits are now squabbling over the future of cannabis. How is it to be regulated? Placed in the pharmacy and made available on prescription? Regulated like fine red wine, with a focus on the quality of the product, the metaphorical grapes, the vineyards, and the country of origin?

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The response to Steven Pinker’s new book has been remarkable. While there are a few mixed reviews (James Q. Wilson in the Wall Street Journal comes to mind),  virtually everyone else either raves about the book or expresses something close to ad hominem contempt and loathing.

At the heart of the disagreement are competing conceptions of research and scholarship. How are we to study violence and to assess whether it has been increasing or decreasing? What analytic tools do we bring to the table?

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It’s a common occurrence for staff to receive threats from inmates.  This year I’ve received seven threats, all documented appropriately…. My facility is like 10 pounds of potatoes in a five-pound bag.  Inmates are sleeping on filthy mattresses on filthy floors because of the lack of space, and the health care is atrocious. Men with problems such as an abscessed tooth can wait 3 or 4 weeks for dental treatment, and men with open wounds are living in filthy conditions, which lead to constant infections.  And even when people do see a doctor or dentist, there is little follow-up. The inmates are treated like animals, in conditions that I would not be able to tolerate myself.

British Columbia Correctional Officer, November, 2011

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“I support keeping our streets safe”, Premier Christy Clark told the legislature last week, in support of the Harper Conservatives’ crime bill. “Where do they stand on a bill that intends to make Canadian streets safer?” she asked of the NDP opposition. Her comments, as one reporter noted, spoke “to a certain constituency her B.C. Liberal party is obsessively courting”. Ms. Clark was “trying to coax back to her tent the 18 per cent of voters who, the pollsters say, support the fledgling B.C. Conservative party”. One can imagine the Randy Newman song, “Rednecks”, playing softly in the background.

The Premier is an intelligent woman; she must know that the very expensive elements of the crime bill have nothing to do with making our streets safer. The Youth Criminal Justice Act already mandates significant sentences and almost routine transfer to adult court for youth offenders who commit serious crimes of violence. The wholesale elimination of conditional sentences for a range of property offences removes judicial discretion from cases where house arrest would be an appropriate judicial response. Perhaps most important, the crime rate has been declining and there is no credible evidence that putting all sorts of people in jail for longer periods of time will make our society more safe.

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With a majority government the Harper Conservatives have indicated that they now have electoral support for their agenda of dramatically increasing Canada’s prison population. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson told the media last week that his government has “ a strong mandate to move forward”.

Close attention to relevant data – or even basic arithmetic – does not appear to be a hallmark of the current government. Slightly less than 40 per cent of Canadian voters cast their ballots for the Conservatives earlier this year, and only 61 per cent of eligible voters actually made it to the polls. The reality, then, is that the Conservatives – and many of their policies — would appear to have the support of less than 25 per cent of adult Canadians.

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One of my first enduring visual memories of Liz Elliott is from a day in the late 1980s. Liz had just moved from Ontario to study in our Ph.D. program, and she was interested in murder – or more specifically, state responses to murder and murderers. The School of Criminology was in its first of three locations, on the 7^th floor of the SFU Library; Liz was almost nine months pregnant and Milt had arrived in the School to pick her up. “Come on, rotunda”, he said to her affectionately, as they walked out of the department that day.

I did not know then how much I would learn from Liz Elliott and how much she would influence my view of murder and murderers, of prisons and prisoners, and of the importance of understanding and supporting those human beings who are typically the most vilified within our culture. In a recent email Liz thanked me for being a mentor to her (along with expressing frustration and outrage at yet another particularly lame initiative from the Harper Conservatives).

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